The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [80]
"You the newbie, right?" she asked, lifting a coffee mug in salute.
"I guess," Gaunt said uneasily.
"Takes some adjustment, I know. Took a good six months before I realized this wasn't the worst thing that could happen to me. But you'll get there eventually." One of Nero's hands was bandaged, a white mitten with a safety pin stuck through the dressing. "Take it from me, though. Don't go back inside the box." Then she glanced at Clausen. "You are giving him a chance about this, aren't you?"
"Of course," Clausen said. "That's the deal."
"Occurs to me sometimes maybe it would be easier if there wasn't a deal, you know," Nero said. "Like, we just give them their duties and to hell with it."
"You wouldn't have been too pleased if we didn't give you the choice," Da Silva said. He was already taking off his coat, settling in for the stay.
"Yeah, but what did I know back then? Six months feels like half a lifetime ago now."
"When did you go under?" Gaunt asked.
"Twenty ninety-two. One of the first 100 million."
"Gaunt's got a head start on you," Clausen said. "Guy was one of the Few. The original Few, the first 200,000."
"Holy shit. That is some head start." Nero narrowed her eyes. "He up to speed on things yet? My recollection is they didn't know what they were getting into back then."
"Most of them didn't," Clausen said.
"Know what?" Gaunt asked.
"Sleepover was a cover, even then," Nero said. "You were being sold a scam. There was never any likelihood of an immortality breakthrough, no matter how long you slept."
"I don't understand. You're saying it was all a con?"
"Of a kind," Nero said. "Not to make money for anyone, but to begin the process of getting the whole of humanity into hibernation. It had to begin small, so that they had time to work the wrinkles out of the technology. If the people in the know had come out into the open and announced their plans, no one would have believed them. And if they had been believed, there'd have been panic and confusion all over the world. So they began with the Few, and then expanded the operation slowly. First a few hundred thousand. Then half a million. Then a million ... so on." She paused. "Establishing a pattern, a normal state of affairs. They kept the lid on it for thirty years. But then the rumours started spreading, the rumours that there was something more to Sleepover."
"The dragons didn't help," Da Silva said. "It was always going to be a tall order explaining those away."
"By the time I went under," Nero said, "most of us knew the score. The world was going to end if we didn't sleep. It was our moral duty, our obligation, to submit to the hibernation rigs. That, or take the euthanasia option. I took the freezer route, but a lot of my friends opted for the pill. Figured the certainty of death was preferable to the lottery of getting into the boxes, throwing the cosmic dice ..." She was looking at Gaunt intently, meeting his eyes as she spoke. "And I knew about this part of the deal, as well. That, at some point, there'd be a chance of me being brought out of sleep to become a caretaker. But, you know, the likelihood of that was vanishingly small. Never thought it would happen to me."
"No one ever does," Clausen said.
"What happened?" Gaunt asked, nodding at the foil-wrapped body.
"Gimenez died when a steam pipe burst down on level eight. I don't think he felt much, it would have been so quick. I got down there as quickly as I could, obviously. Shut off the steam leak and managed to drag Gimenez back to the infirmary."
"Nero was burned getting Gimenez back here," Da Silva said.
"Hey, I'll mend. Just not much good with a screwdriver right now."
"I'm sorry about Gimenez," Clausen said.
"You don't need to be. Gimenez never really liked it here. Always figured he'd made the wrong decision, sticking with us rather than going back into the box. Tried to talk him round, of course, but it was like arguing with a wall." Nero ran her good hand through her curls. "Not saying I didn't get on with the guy. But there's no arguing that he's better off now than